This article attempts to illustrate the use of the Constant Comparative Method (CCM) for organizing as well as analysing qualitative research in a way that the beginning qualitative researcher can understand. The significance of the CCM is that it is not only useful as a method of analysis but is also a critical component of the entire research process. It includes initial categorization, comparison, inductive analysis and finally refinement of data and categories.

The article provides a brief overview of the context that has led to the emergence of mixed methods research and examines current definitions for this research approach. It examines the philosophical framework for conducting mixed methods research and compares this with those for conducting quantitative and qualitative research. Finally, it presents different mixed methods design possibilities, and discusses some of the methodological implications of these designs, drawing on some of the research being conducted in the School of Education, University of the West Indies, Mona.

This article re-presents some of the issues that emerged both for students and for me as I worked as an academic coach and mentor for a cohort of 16 purposefully selected doctoral students. The programme they participated in intended to facilitate their shift from a researcher stance rooted in positivist research understandings and methodologies to a researcher stance situated in interpretive understandings and methodologies.

In this paper qualitative research in literature is considered. It is suggested that this is problematic because work in the field of literary studies is intrinsically qualitative. This does not mean however, that literary studies has avoided the attention of those like highly quantitative bureaucracies who are more interested in quantitative concerns. Historical manifestations of the tensions regarding qualitative and quantitative evaluation in literature are highlighted and a conclusion drawn that these do not serve the best interests of the field.

The purpose of this article is to describe the origins of qualitative inquiry, research and writing in the Caribbean. The period under review goes back more than 200 years. The paper begins with a discussion of the criteria for determining what counts as qualitative research, the conditions under which research was conducted and made public in the 19th century, and the differences in standards between then and now. It will then briefly describe the categories of work that meet most or all of these criteria for qualitative research.

This paper will focus on a very specific form of qualitative research described as critical performance ethnography. I will begin with some general definitions in order to arrive at a description and understanding of critical peiformance ethnography. The scholar Michelle Fine outlines three positions in qualitative research. These are very general but I think they will be helpful at arriving at critical performance ethnography. 

I would like to specially welcome this issue of JEDIC and the special papers that came out of our inaugural conference, 'Qualitative Inquiry in the Caribbean: Past, Present and Future'. It was a special conference because for the first time so many colleagues (150 or more) came together as a community of qualitative researchers from other departments on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, other universities in Jamaica, our sister campuses and other international universities.

It was while we were attending the Third Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign in 2007 that the idea of hosting a Qualitative Symposium at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, was conceived. Although as a School of Education we had made much progress in accepting the qualitative approach as an acceptable way to do research, there was still a sense that those who used qualitative methods were operating in isolation.